It’s a Small World After All

Several have noted Obama’s recent speech in India where he referred to himself over 100 times in a 30 minute period. It obviously isn’t the first time that has been a thing – he does that all the time. Some think it is an indication of narcissism or some other mental illness…and I have little doubt that is at least some of the reason but I have to wonder if there isn’t another pathology in play here.

Some speakers use personal references to relate to their audiences. A funny story here, a self-deprecating anecdote there or the reveal of a personal vulnerability brings the speaker closer to his listeners as he invites them into his world. President Obama doesn’t do that. He uses himself as the object of the oration, not to illustrate but to draw the attention to himself.

This is not just a mark of narcissism – I mean it is narcissistic – but not JUST narcissism. This is an indication of a man with a very small world, surrounded by a very small group of people. He simply has no external experiences to talk about, no observations of human interaction outside his tight little circle, so it should not be a big surprise that the majority of stories he has to tell, at least the ones he doesn’t make up of whole cloth, involve him or something he did.

As far as the “whole cloth” thing, it is important to note that this is yet another reason that cloistered people make up fables about themselves because they simply do not have enough real life experiences to draw from. These are people with very limited personal histories and live very singular, self-centered lives. These people are the hub of a very small wheel.

People who only interact with a small number of intimates tend to surround themselves with “yes men” – only those individuals who reinforce their own biases. These “yes men” perform dual roles, first as a mirror to reflect self-affirming information to the hub and secondly as a physical “firewall”, preventing unwanted or upsetting information from reaching the person at the hub. Their behaviors are reinforced by the hub because the hub rewards them for protecting them from disagreeable ideas. The built in danger is when the “firewall” realizes that they have the real power in the relationship and start to control and manipulate the hub by “managing” the information by they allow in and what they don’t.

If we can see that Barack Obama is a narcissist, how difficult do you think it has been for an intelligent person like Valerie Jarrett to recognize that? How about Bill Ayers? Rahm Emmanuel? Eric Holder? Even a blast from the past like Tony Rezko?

There is a reason that Jarrett is so tight with the Obamas – I joke that she is a “Rasputin” but it is less joke and more a statement of fact. Jarrett has known the Obamas at since at least 1987 when she was Deputy Corporation Counsel for Finance and Development in the administration of Harold Washington, Chicago’s first African-American mayor – but according to historian Paul Kengor, “[Barack] Obama’s mentor, Frank Marshall Davis, worked with the literal relatives of Valerie Jarrett—her grandfather and future father-in-law—in Chicago’s Communist Party circles in the 1940s.” In an earlier piece, Kengor stated, “So, imagine where we are today: Barack Obama, Frank Marshall Davis’s political godson, and Valerie Jarrett, daughter-in-law to Vernon Jarrett and granddaughter of Robert Taylor—men with links to pro-Stalinism—are the two dominant figures in the White House, the power center that battled the USSR throughout the Cold War.”

Obama’s world is very, very small, producing a very narrow worldview. The memes that he is historic, intelligent and somehow racially and politically transcendent are not comments designed to convince anyone outside his wheel –they are simply reinforcing statements his firewall directs inward for his benefit. His endless self- referencing speeches, the apparent disconnects with reality, the ignorance of tradition, his antipathy toward our allies and his seemingly irrational actions (and inactions) are all explainable once one understands that this is a man who has been managed his entire political career – perhaps his whole life – by people like Jarrett who hold far-left worldviews.